The Federal Commerce Fee banned companies from writing and shopping for their very own critiques in an August ruling. Now, it is alleging {that a} buyer overview website, Sitejabber, revealed “deceptive” scores and critiques on behalf of the 130,000 companies on its platform. The FTC’s proposed order would cease Sitejabber from “misrepresenting” buyer scores and critiques “sooner or later.”
The FTC’s criticism alleges that Sitejabber collected critiques on the level of sale, or earlier than clients obtained or skilled a services or products. In a single instance, clients had been requested to charge their total purchasing expertise out of 5 stars and write one thing shortly straight after testing.
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These fast scores and critiques, or Prompt Suggestions Survey outcomes, turn out to be a part of a website’s profile on Sitejabber. The FTC says this might mislead folks into considering prior clients rated a enterprise’s services or products extremely once they had been truly simply ranking the purchasing expertise.
“Presenting [Instant Feedback Survey] outcomes as post-fulfillment critiques and scores can mislead shoppers into believing {that a} enterprise’s excessive overview depend and excessive ranking means 1000’s of shoppers have had constructive experiences with the enterprise’s services or products, when actually the scores and critiques displayed primarily mirrored solely clients’ experiences purchasing on the enterprise’s web sites,” web page 4 of the FTC criticism reads.
The way to Keep away from FTC Scrunity on Your Web site Opinions
Companies can keep away from FTC scrutiny by ensuring their Prompt Suggestions Survey scores and critiques are unentangled from their product scores and critiques — so clients clearly know what’s being rated.
This is without doubt one of the FTC’s first enforcement actions underneath its new rule.
“Together with our rule on faux critiques and testimonials, circumstances like this one present that we’ll act to cease all types of deception within the overview ecosystem.” FTC Bureau of Shopper Safety director Samuel Levine acknowledged.
The FTC’s earlier rule on faux critiques and testimonials stops companies from shopping for or promoting faux critiques, together with AI-generated ones.
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